d!' 'He is come, and I am he!'
said Ulysses. Then he promised to give them lands of their own if he was
victorious, and he showed them the scar on his thigh that the boar dealt
with his white tusk, long ago. The two men kissed him and shed tears of
joy, and Ulysses said that he would go back first into the hall, and
that they were to follow him. He would ask to be allowed to try to bend
the bow, and Eumaeus, whatever the wooers said, must place it in his
hands, and then see that the women were locked up in their own separate
hall. Philoetius was to fasten the door leading from the courtyard into
the road. Ulysses then went back to his seat in the hall, near the door,
and his servants followed.

Eurymachus was trying in vain to bend the bow, and Antinous proposed to
put off the trial till next day, and then sacrifice to the God Apollo,
and make fresh efforts. They began to drink, but Ulysses asked to be
allowed to try if he could string the bow. They told him that wine had
made him impudent, and threatened to put him in a ship and send him to
King Echetus, an ogre, who would cut him to pieces. But Penelope said
that the beggar must try his strength; not that she would marry him, if
he succeeded. She would only give him new clothes, a sword, and a spear,
and send him wherever he wanted to go. Telemachus cried out that the bow
was his own; he would make a present of it to the beggar if he chose;
and he bade his mother join her maidens, and work at her weaving. She
was amazed to hear her son speak like the master of the house, and she
went upstairs with her maidens to her own room.

Eumaeus was carrying the bow to Ulysses, when the wooers made such an
uproar that he laid it down, in fear for his life. But Telemachus
threatened to punish him if he did not obey his master, so he placed the
bow in the hands of Ulysses, and then went and told Eurycleia to lock
the women servants up in their own separate hall. Philoetius slipped
into the courtyard, and made the gates fast with a strong rope, and then
came back, and watched Ulysses, who was turning the bow this way and
that, to see if the horns were still sound, for horns were then used in
bow making. The wooers were mocking him, but suddenly he bent and strung
the great bow as easily as a harper fastens a new string to his harp. He
tried the string, and it twanged like the note of a swallow. He took up
an arrow that lay on the table (the others were in the quiver beside
him), h